The House of Marriage: Poems

In her debut collection, THE HOUSE OF MARRIAGE, Erin Hanusa searches ruthlessly and compassionately for deep and strange truth in a world we only believe we know. Whether set in a field in Tennessee, the lunar beauty of Egypt's White Desert or a rain-soaked Plymouth on a Midwestern highway, her passionate, candid verse reconciles longing with understanding. The opening poems deal with objects close and familiar: animals, landscapes, and the body. Later poems trace arcs of familial betrayal and forgiveness, or spiral through lyric, erotic mystery. Each of these transcendent poems is ultimately concerned with "knowing the finite ways we possess / to love, / in learning them all." This remarkable debut affirms Hanusas place among America's most promising young poets.